Reference: Niedermeyer, Jason (2008/9/10). Scientific Literacy Without a Text.. Education Week, 28,
The artcle Scientific Literacy without a text brings about the idea that our textbooks may be acting as a hinderance to the real learning past scientists had made. Niedermeyer said, "If science is about finding the ruling principles of our natural world, and if the people who helped write the definitions came to their conclusions by personal discovery, then shouldn't a part of becoming scientifically literate be to go through those same paces?" Niedermeyer thinks that if we allow our students to discover many of the main concepts of science through discovery rather than textbooks it will allow for information and scientific fact to be more deeply rooted in the students brain. This can help students down the road by making information more easily accessible to students because of possible "life long memories" as Niedermeyer stated. The article has some ideas for how students can reach this point of questioning and learning one of which is a yearly forum involving leader in different fields along with some of the countries best teachers. This article likes the idea of students questioning because of how questioning can expand the mind and knowledge of a particular subject.
Reflection: I thought this article made a lot of sense, but like most other ideas to improve our country and students may be easier said than done. I believe that to make our courses relevant this forum could be very helpful in the useful education of our students. it makes you think could the major question of, "why are we learning this" asked by many students throughout a year really be ended by this forum dealing with the subjects and topics that are most perternant at the time. i am skeptical that a relevant panel like this could ever really be assembled, but i also think that we could never get rid of certain curriculum topics because of the disadvantage it would cause to some students who may have missed some information due to the changing times. Schools could easily take entire years researching and question many subjects in science but if this happened would we have to sacrifice genetics, animal science, or the many topics pertaining to plants. I enjoyed this article, but I feel like the real goals of our schools don't fit the self exploratoration goals set forth by this article. Until schools and the people making decisions come up with a new format for schools i don't think this form of scientific literacy without books will come to a school near you..
Andrew Duquette
Reference: Niedermeyer, Jason (2008/9/10). Scientific Literacy Without a Text.. Education Week, 28,
The artcle Scientific Literacy without a text brings about the idea that our textbooks may be acting as a hinderance to the real learning past scientists had made. Niedermeyer said, "If science is about finding the ruling principles of our natural world, and if the people who helped write the definitions came to their conclusions by personal discovery, then shouldn't a part of becoming scientifically literate be to go through those same paces?" Niedermeyer thinks that if we allow our students to discover many of the main concepts of science through discovery rather than textbooks it will allow for information and scientific fact to be more deeply rooted in the students brain. This can help students down the road by making information more easily accessible to students because of possible "life long memories" as Niedermeyer stated. The article has some ideas for how students can reach this point of questioning and learning one of which is a yearly forum involving leader in different fields along with some of the countries best teachers. This article likes the idea of students questioning because of how questioning can expand the mind and knowledge of a particular subject.
Reflection: I thought this article made a lot of sense, but like most other ideas to improve our country and students may be easier said than done. I believe that to make our courses relevant this forum could be very helpful in the useful education of our students. it makes you think could the major question of, "why are we learning this" asked by many students throughout a year really be ended by this forum dealing with the subjects and topics that are most perternant at the time. i am skeptical that a relevant panel like this could ever really be assembled, but i also think that we could never get rid of certain curriculum topics because of the disadvantage it would cause to some students who may have missed some information due to the changing times. Schools could easily take entire years researching and question many subjects in science but if this happened would we have to sacrifice genetics, animal science, or the many topics pertaining to plants. I enjoyed this article, but I feel like the real goals of our schools don't fit the self exploratoration goals set forth by this article. Until schools and the people making decisions come up with a new format for schools i don't think this form of scientific literacy without books will come to a school near you..